Archives for category: Early Childhood Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Nancy Bailey on The War Against Little Children

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2019 //
7

 

Nancy Bailey describes here the determined effort by policymakers to stamp out play and childhood, all in the name of teaching reading long before children are ready to learn to read.

Because kindergarten has become more advanced, preschool is seen as the time children must have prereading skills for kindergarten. If they don’t, it’s seen as a red flag. This makes teachers and parents push children to learn to read early.

Children are expected to know letters and numbers, even basic sight words. They’re supposed to be able to sit and focus on tasks for longer periods. But preschool wasn’t always about teaching prereading skills, and we should question if children that young are being pushed to read too soon.

In 2002, Newsweek published an article entitled “The Right Way to Read.” The title was conjecture. Reporters visited the Roseville Cooperative Preschool in northern California. Children there were called “masters of the universe” because they oversaw play. Children played most of the time. The school based everything on play.

Children played at a science table. They used magnifying glasses to explore flowers, cacti, and shells. They donned smocks to do art, lots of art. They were able to climb and stay active. They had access to books and a dollhouse.

There were no letters or numbers on the wall.

Director and founder Bev Bos told teachers, “Forget about kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We should be focusing on where children are right now.”

But Newsweek didn’t praise the preschool. They were there to show the controversy surrounding it.

The Bush administration had claimed research indicated that 50,000 Head Start teachers were going to have to learn how to provide explicit instruction on how to teach the alphabet, letter sounds, and writing to young children.

Not only that. Preschool teachers were to use a detailed literacy-screening test. Forty-five million was being earmarked for preschool-reading research.

Children were no longer masters of their world. Adults were in control.

Yes, the adults were in control but they made horrible decision that stole childhood and play from children.

For all the hundreds of millions and billions poured into the Great Crusade to Teach Preschoolers to Read, there has been minimal change in NAEP scores for reading, in fourth or eighth grades. Despite the pressure to raise test scores in reading, scores remained stagnant, and no academic progress was made at all for the lowest performing students since the implementation of NCLB almost two decades ago.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Play, Testing

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2019 //
30

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, posts frequently about education in his state.

 

Last week, National Public Radio’s Alexandra Starr first reported on Florida’s mandatory retention of 3rd graders who don’t pass a reading proficiency test. Even though it is stigmatizing for children to be retained, and “multiple studies have found that flunking a grade makes it much more likely students will fail to graduate from high school,” the high stakes testing law has spread to about 40 percent of states.

States Are Ratcheting Up Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

NPR’s Starr draws on experts like Pedro Noguera, Nell Duke, and Diane Horm, while explaining how short-term benefits of 3rd grade retention “dissipate over time.” She also cites Marty West, a Big Data researcher who sidesteps the anxiety imposed on children and pressure on teachers to increase pass rates through ill-conceived instructional practices, and says that Florida’s well-funded mandatory retention law doesn’t hurt students’ graduation rates. Neither does West address states like Oklahoma, with chronic underfunding of education.And that leads to the first slippery slope created by Florida’s willingness to scale up punishments for young children and their teachers in order to improve student performance. At least it invests more than $130 million per year on its reading sufficiency act. When Oklahoma legislators, who were often persuaded by Jeb Bush’s public relations campaign, passed its reading act, they intended to invest $150 per struggling reader, but they only came up with $6 million, which was enough for only about $75 per student. It took six years to find money for about $153 per student.

For First Time, ‘Read or Fail’ Law Is Fully Funded. Will It Reduce Retentions?

In NPR’s second report focusing on Tulsa Ok., Starr shows the benefits of well-funded, holistic pre-kindergarten instruction. Oklahoma and edu-philanthropists fund such classes for 4-year-olds; nearly 3/4ths of Oklahoma students enroll in pre-k. And, next door to a comprehensive pre-k partnership, the majority-Hispanic Rosa Parks Elementary School illustrates the promise of partnerships for improving public schools. It is a part of the Tulsa Union community school system which so impressed David Kirp that his New York times article that featured Rosa Parks was entitled “Who Needs Charters When You Have Schools Like These?”  Oklahoma Among States Setting Higher Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/who-needs-charters-when-you-have-public-schools-like-these.htmlA Rosa Parks elementary teacher explained the dilemma schools face regarding kids who aren’t on track to pass the high stakes 3rd grade test, “Very early on, we have to put them on a plan if we think that they’re going to be held back in third grade for a test.” Unfortunately Starr didn’t have time to dig into those plans the way that Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has done. It leads to the second slippery slope created by high stakes testing for 3rd graders.

Palmer cites a librarian who explained, “‘RSA allows two years of retention, and two years in third grade would be worse,’ she said. ‘They would be completely destroyed.’” And that raises the question about the risks educators can/must take in order to not completely destroy their students.

The Oklahoma Watch’s study of federal data showed that 2,533 3rd graders were retained in 2015-16. Worse, she found that “repeating a grade is actually more common in kindergarten and first grade,” and “the high-stakes third-grade test appears to drive many of the early retentions.”  Oklahoma retained 3,977 kindergarteners, and a total of 10,345 students in the kindergarten through 2ndgrades.

These retentions were not evenly spread across the state. Next door to Tulsa Union, the Tulsa Public Schools, for instance, has about 2-1/3rds as many students as Union. The TPS retained 823 students through kindergarten and second grade, or more than 4-1/3rds as many. We can only hope that the edu-philanthropists who fund worthy early education programs, as well as their opposite – the corporate reform policies of Deborah Gist’s TPS – will realize how and why those two approaches are the antithesis of each other..

Palmer also touched on the third slippery slope when she explained the benchmark assessments that are used in predicting failure on the end-of-year tests. She writes, “Schools also rely on computerized benchmarking programs to glean more information on students’ skillsets and how they compare to other students their age.” But, to say the least, they are “not an exact science.” This leads to crucial, potentially life-changing and risky decisions being made by parents and teachers using data on a computer screen that they acknowledge they don’t understand.

Lastly, the dehumanizing slide down into systems where the punitive is seen as normal, even for our youngest students, might or might not have been predictable. Twenty years ago, the reward and punishment of kindergarteners would have seemed despicable. Market-driven reform may have begun as a way to force teachers to comply. Then it was dumped on teenagers. Now, when such stressful incentives and disincentives are imposed on 5-year-olds, it doesn’t seem surprising to read Big Data studies that claim that those who fail tests in the states with the most funding for competition-driven reform may not be damaged as much as previously thought …     

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Cruelty, Early Childhood Education, Florida, Oklahoma, Testing

Denisha Jones: Kindergarten Teachers in Florida Resist Inappropriate Testing

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2019 //
9

 

 

Denisha Jones speaks out here about the outrageous misuse of tests for children in kindergarten in Florida.

Incoming kindergarten students are tested online and their scores are published! This is child abuse.

Jones is an early childhood specialist, lawyer, and a recent addition to the board of the Network for Public Education.

She went to Miami and interviewed leaders of the “I Am Ready” Resistance Group, who described the harm that Florida’s tests do to children.

Julia Musella told Jones:

”’I am ready’ was born in direct response to the inappropriate testing of incoming Kindergarten children by computer and then publishing the scores in 2018. This disgraceful labeling of more than 50% of Florida’s Early Learning centers as failing to prepare children for kindergarten created an outcry from early educators across the state.  We had enough years of being voiceless so we created an online petition through Change.org to then-Governor Rick Scott demanding the scores be taken down and comply with the statute on assessments. At the same time, we launched a public Facebook page, registered “I am Ready” as a nonprofit corporation to serve as an advocacy group, and encouraged local groups of providers to launch private Facebook pages to dialogue with each other.

“Our hope went beyond the short-term goal of having the scores eliminated and the assessment changed to meet the statute, although that was something we used to engage the community statewide. Our long term goal was to organize, galvanize and start a movement that would be the voice of Early Learning and small business owners who are in the business of education throughout the state. We were in it for a long term permanent organization that would use voter registration, voter mobilization (locally and statewide) and education of legislators to give a voice to young children, who are voiceless.”

 

 

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Testing

Oregon: Fight Builds for “Too Young to Test” Bill

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2019 //
12

From the Too Young to Test campaign:

Once again, thanks to those who submitted statements to the House Education Committee in support of HB 2318.  There were over 50 submissions in favor of HB 2318!
The in-person testimony in support of “Too Young to Test” was powerful.  It included a kindergarten teacher, a second grade teacher, a school counselor, a parent, a retired superintendent and a retired early childhood program administrator.
I’m including a link to the written submissions and to the hearing, if you want to see them.
Rep. Lively (the Chief Sponsor) will be meeting with Rep. Doherty (Committee Chair) this week to discuss next steps.  These might include another hearing to deal with additional questions, an amendment proposal or perhaps a committee vote in the near future.
The opposition will continue to contact members of the Committee.  Opponents include testing corporations, “testocrats” (who earn their paychecks collecting data and crunching numbers), district and state educational bureaucracies (who historically always advocate for testing), and early childhood education advocates (who have bought into the “imperative” of collecting more and more data about little children).
None of them talk about what all of this testing does to kids, to teachers or to a healthy, developmentally-appropriate education.
You and your friends can still send a brief message to members of the Education Committee.  It would be greatly appreciated.  I’ll include email contact link.
Thanks for your help with this.  We are up against powerful forces.  The kids are worthy of our effort.
—  Roscoe 
https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Measures/Exhibits/HB2318
http://oregon.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?clip_id=25641
https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Committees/HED/Overview
Categories Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Testing

Alfie Kohn On Academic Rigor for Little Children

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2019 //
35

 

Alfie Kohn responds here to the research study claiming that little children need academic rigor and that it’s good for them to start academic studies young.  Thanks to Ann Cook of the New York Performance Standards Consortium for asking Alfie to respond.

 

You mentioned this new study in AERJ, which ostensibly found that teaching advanced academic content in kindergarten is beneficial in terms of academic achievement as well as “social emotional skills”: https://is.gd/FNLhjW.  I’ve had a chance to read the study itself, and I am not impressed.

1.  This is not a comparison of kids randomly assigned to academic vs. nonacademic conditions.  In the kindergartens they looked at, virtually all teachers reported teaching academic skills that were coded as advanced (94% ELA, 99% math); the teachers’ self-reports of how often they did some teaching of those skills were correlated with the outcome variables.  “How often” was measured as number of days a month the teacher said she taught those skills, with no measure of how much time was spent at each session (which the researchers conceded) and also with no attention to how the teachers taught (e.g., via direct instruction vs. embedded in play or projects).

2.  That drilling kids on content can boost test scores that same year (which happened here only to a moderate extent, incidentally) is unsurprising and means very little — both because such tests are a lousy indicator of intellectual proficiency (in general, and particularly for young children) and also because a body of earlier ECE research shows that any such advantage tends to melt away after a few years.

3.  The only potentially meaningful finding, then, concerns social-emotional outcomes.  But…

a) The effects they primarily looked at dealt with compliance (self-control, persistence, attention, following rules), and there’s reason to wonder whether these are always beneficial to the child, even if they’re convenient for the teacher.  The researchers did ask about internalizing and externalizing behaviors, too, but I’m not convinced these measures would have captured most of the potentially negative effects of developmentally inappropriate teaching, particularly if it took place for sustained periods and was done by direct instruction (which, again, we don’t know).

b) All the social skills and behavioral effects were rated by the same teachers who taught the academic content, not by independent evaluators (let alone by independent evaluators blind to the type of instruction).

c)  The ratings were all made that same year.  Some long-term ECE studies have found delayed negative effects of this kind of teaching.

d)  Of 12 social/behavioral measures, there was a statistically significant (and quite small) effect on only three — which didn’t include internalizing or externalizing behaviors.  So the most that could be claimed on the basis of this study is that, with respect to kids’ aggression, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc., there was no short-term effect, positive or negative, as a result of teaching academic skills for an unspecified length of time using unspecified methods…according to the teachers themselves.  And of course no attention was paid to the opportunity costs of academic instruction in terms of what the children didn’t have a chance to do during the time they were being taught reading and math.  Meaningful benefits of such instruction?  Not shown here.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education

Farewell to the Early Childhood Programs at U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2019 //
17

 

 

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that a key policy post was given to a person who previously worked for the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. She came through Leadership for Educational Equity, which is TFA’s political training program. Vouchers for babies?

 

Meet the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s New Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Programs

Image removed by sender. Directors Laurie VanderPloeg and Annie HsiaoHello, Early Learning Leaders!

I am excited to introduce myself. I am Annie Hsiao, and I have joined the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) as the deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs. In this role I will provide leadership for OESE’s discretionary grants, including the early learning work and ED’s collaboration with the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to administer the new Preschool Development Grants — Birth through Five program.

Most recently, I was the senior advisor to the acting assistant attorney general of the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, I advised on policy, strategy, and programs in the division charged with awarding all of the agency’s grants, promoting crime reduction, and supporting victims of crime; as well as with public safety, rule of law, and juvenile justice reform. Prior to that, I was the director of strategic partnerships at Leadership for Educational Equity, a program manager at the Charles Koch Foundation, and a program officer at the Walton Family Foundation. I also served as the director of education policy at the American Action Forum, and, with an appointment from the George W. Bush administration, as the director of government and community relations at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

I am originally from California, and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and Asian American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University.

OESE and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) look forward to continuing their partnership to promote positive learning experiences for our youngest learners!

During this busy time of the year, we hope you take time to check out some of the resources we are highlighting this month, including exciting work from the Early Learning Research network and a great opportunity from our colleagues at HHS for individuals interested in promoting developmental screenings to become an Act Early Ambassador.
Categories Billionaires, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, U.S. Department of Education, Walton Foundation

DEY Opposes Vouchers for Pre-Kindergarten

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2019 //
9

 

The New Republic, usually a liberal publication, recently published an article recommending vouchers instead of universal pre-K in public institutions.

Defending the Early Years, an organization that fights for developmentally appropriate education for young children, issued the following response:

 

DEY Response to The New Republic Article, “Give Parents Money, Not Universal Pre-K”

​The experts at Defending the Early Years find fault with the premise of the article which pits family support and high-quality preschool education against one another.

Haspel is correct, we need greater family support, starting with maternal and paternal paid leave for the first year of life; but we also need publicly funded rich, progressive, play-based early care and education for young children until they start formal school. As we learned after Hurricane Katrina, giving people money does not ensure that their life will improve.

The U.S. has never had the political will to spend the billions of dollars it would take to provide universal coverage.  Recognizing the estimated $70 billion a year “preschool market,” investors are happily filling in the gaps in an ECE mixed-market system that has long been broken.

Haspel fails to realize that by ensuring every child has access to high-quality, fully-funded, play-based early care and education, we are doing more for parents than simply giving them a voucher. Voucher experiments in DC and other cities prove that rarely do they cover the full cost of tuition. Parents will be expected to find care that matches the amount of the voucher or supplement the additional costs out of their pocket. This does not help families but instead leaves them trapped between choosing affordable care that could be lower quality or paying out of pocket for high-quality care.  Instead of expecting states to abandon their role in ensuring every child begins with a solid foundation of high-quality early care and education experiences, we should encourage direct support to families and demand each state provide access to early care and education. The only thing wrong with a demand for universal pre-k is that play-based programs are often excluded by states that prefer academic instruction. If giving parents a choice is truly the end goal then we would support parents who chose play-based programs over academic instruction. And we would support parents who chose universal pre-k over vouchers.

Categories Childhood, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform

Oregon: Parents and Teachers Support “Too Young to Test” Bill

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2019 //
6

In Oregon, parents and teachers are supporting legislation to stop standardized testing before grade 3. Even better would be a ban on all such testing. Parents, say no.

Can Children Be ‘Too Young to Test’?


For the first decade after the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 — putting into high gear the testing-based model of education — almost all standardized testing took place in grades 3-8 and 11. Little children were the only ones spared being subjected to the data-driven “business model” approach to learning, with its fixed testing targets and its multitude of accompanying charts and graphs.

No more. Little children have now caught up with their older siblings in the testing derby, on track to join them in taking more than 110 standardized tests by the end of high school. Yes, 110.

Teachers in pre-kindergarten through grade 2 have now joined their teaching colleagues in the older grades in the pressure cooker to produce “accountability” data to match predetermined benchmarks.

Little children are now joining their older siblings in experiencing the sidelining of art, music, creative play and other non-tested curriculum. They, too, are now spending more and more of their day in “seat time,” focused on tested subjects. They, too, are now being repeatedly “tested, sorted and tracked.”

Their teachers know this is developmentally inappropriate. They know it is clearly wrong. But they are not allowed to tell you that. They are not allowed to tell you that most high-performing countries in the world test once in elementary, once in middle school and once in high school. They are not allowed to tell you that teachers already know full well how to identify kids who are struggling with reading, writing and math.

Over the ages, teachers did not need multi-billion dollar testing corporations to tell them how to do their jobs…

One way to change things is for all of us to tell our legislators to support the “Too Young to Test” bill (HB 2318) that has been introduced by Rep. John Lively (D- Springfield). It would prohibit the state government and local districts from standardized testing children from pre-kindergarten through grade 2.

It is modeled on legislation in New York, New Jersey and Illinois. It would allow teachers to make their own professional decisions about which assessments to administer.

The second way is for parents to “Just Say No” to every form of standardized testing that they can.

This is where the ultimate power is: If parents say “no more” — by opting their children out — the testing juggernaut will begin to collapse. We could then join much of the rest of the world in giving a few well-constructed, classroom-based assessments, and save our kids from harm, save our teachers and principals from dispirited burnout and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Testing

Nancy Carlsson-Paige: Online Preschool Stinks!

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
18

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education expert who taught for many years at Lesley University in Cambridge, writes here at Edsurge, a tech website,explaining why online preschool is a truly rotten idea.

It is a terrific article, and it begins like this:

The recent growth of online preschools, already in existence in at least eight states, gives states an inexpensive way to deliver pre-K education. But it is a sorry substitute for the whole child, play-based early childhood education that all young children deserve to have.

Cyber schools have been increasing over the last twenty years, and most programs are marketed by for-profit companies. The more recent emergence of online preschool programs opens the door for cyber education businesses to cash in on the estimated $70 billion per year “pre-K market.”

In an education reform climate that has redefined education as academic standards and success on tests, online pre-K programs are an easy sell. Parents are ready to buy into computer-based programs that will get their kids ready for kindergarten by drilling them on letters and numbers. The programs teach discrete, narrow skills through repetition and rote learning. The truth is that for children to master the print system or concepts of number, they have to go through complex developmental progressions that build these concepts over time through activity and play.

Young children don’t learn optimally from screen-based instruction. Kids learn through activity. They use their bodies, minds and all of their senses to learn. They learn concepts through hands-on experiences with materials in three-dimensional space. Through their own activity and play, and their interactions with peers and teachers, children build their ideas gradually over time.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Online Education

Governor-Elect Newsom: Expanding Pre-K Cannot Take the Place of Reducing Class Sizes!

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
14

Governor-Elected Gavin Newsom has let it be known that he plans to use California’s large reserves to expand pre-K.

As we have learned in New York City these past few years, expanding pre-K is great, but it is far from enough.

The most pressing problem in California’s schools are:

1. Reducing class sizes in K-12
2. Increasing teachers’ salaries
3. A moratorium on charter schools, which take money away from public schools
4. Providing the counselors and support personnel that schools need

Governor-Elect Newsom should not forget that the billionaires spent huge sums of money funding former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa, who came in third.

And they spent millions more trying to defeat new State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and losing.

Put the money where the kids are.

Pre-K is nice but not enough.

From the LA Times:

Seeking to frame his new administration as one with a firm focus on closing the gap between children from affluent and poor families, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom will propose spending some $1.8 billion on an array of programs designed to boost California’s enrollment in early education and child-care programs.

Newsom’s plan, which he hinted at in a Fresno event last month, will be a key element in the state budget proposal he submits to the Legislature shortly after taking office Monday, a source close to the governor-elect’s transition team said Tuesday.

The spending would boost programs designed to ensure children enter kindergarten prepared to learn, closing what some researchers have called the “readiness gap” that exists based on a family’s income. It would also phase in an expansion of prekindergarten, and offer money to help school districts that don’t have facilities for full-day kindergarten.

“The fact that he’s making significant investments with his opening budget is really exciting,” Ted Lempert, president of the Bay Area-based nonprofit Children Now, said Tuesday. “What’s exciting is the comprehensiveness of it, because it’s saying we’re going to focus on prenatal through age 5.”

A broad overview document reviewed by The Times shows that most of the outlay under the plan — $1.5 billion — would be a one-time expense in the budget year that begins July 1. Those dollars would be a single infusion of cash, an approach favored by Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years.

Most of the money would be spent on efforts to expand childcare services and kindergarten classes. By law, a governor must submit a full budget to the Legislature no later than Jan. 10. Lawmakers will spend the winter and spring reviewing the proposal and must send a final budget plan to Newsom by June 15.

The governor-elect will propose a $750-million boost to kindergarten funding, aimed at expanding facilities to allow full-day programs. A number of school districts offer only part-day programs, leaving many low-income families to skip enrolling their children due to kindergarten classes that end in the middle of the workday. The dollars would not count toward California’s three-decades-old education spending guarantee, Proposition 98, and therefore would not reduce planned spending on other education services.

Close behind in total cost is a budget proposal by Newsom to help train child-care workers and expand local facilities already subsidized by the state, as well as those serving parents who attend state colleges and universities. Together, those efforts could cost a total of $747 million, according to the document reviewed Tuesday.

An expansion of prekindergarten programs would be phased in over three years at a cost of $125 million in the first year. The multiyear rollout would, according to the budget overview, “ensure the system can plan for the increase in capacity.”
Lempert said the Newsom proposal is notable for trying to avoid battles in recent years that pitted prekindergarten and expanded child care against each other for additional taxpayer dollars…

Another $200 million of the proposal would be earmarked for programs that provide home visits to expectant parents from limited-income families and programs that provide healthcare screenings for young children. Some of the money would come from the state’s Medi-Cal program, and other money from federal matching dollars. Funding for the home visits program was provided in the budget Brown signed last summer, and the Newsom effort would build on that.

The incoming governor is likely to face considerable demands for additional spending, in part because the Legislature’s independent analysts believe continued strength in tax revenues could produce a cash reserve of some $29 billion over the next 18 months. Almost $15 billion of that amount could be in unrestricted reserves, the kind that can be spent on any number of government programs.…

Categories California, Class size, Early Childhood Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »